Xanthoria parietina

More work on the Loving Lichens and Awareness of Mental Health Issues webinars this afternoon.

I started early though with a 140 mile round trip to Hexham General Hospital for a consultation over a knee MRI I had fifty weeks ago. If I'd pretty much made my mind up that I don't want more surgery and I suspected that would be the surgeons recommendation. I was kind of surprised that it couldn't be done over zoom.... But I soon found out why. Yet again sat in front of a consultant who didn't have access to my scans, just the same summary I did. Apparently the mobile units are often private third party contractors and don't have direct access to upload scan to patient records. So they are supposed to post a physical copy to the relevant hospital who then upload it. The surgeon told me that this (very) regularly doesn't happen. So he always sees patients as at least he can send them for an xray. I was the first patient today.... But the process immediately meant that I ran over by 20+ minutes. I can only imagine that gets worse as the day goes on and must be horribly stressful for everyone involved.
The NHS never fails to amaze me. The people I meet working within it are pretty much always caring, hardworking and bloody good at what they do. But whoever is responsible for connecting the dots and looking at the big picture (I suspect they have a central London address that starts with "Houses of...") is getting some things very wrong.